


A Second Week of Religion and Doctor Who

by Tammany



Series: Doctor Who Meta-Drop [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Analysis, Lit-Crit, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 20:57:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16605314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: For a second week running Chris Chibnall's new Doctor demonstrates religious behavior and belief. Further lit-crit ensues.





	A Second Week of Religion and Doctor Who

For a second week running we have Doctor Who in a religious mode, this time not only officiating over a wedding, but also overtly claiming to have a faith of her own, focused (in keeping with last week's liturgy) on love and on hope...hope before even love, love as a bringer of hope.

After all these decades of Doctor Who being an ideal spokesperson for a secular atheist who's not all that fond of Christian faith, part of me staggers in shock. As a person of peculiar faith myself--Christian, but far from quietly orthodox--I find it pleasing, and I find her theology as demonstrated so far also pleasing. But this is, to my mind, changing the "who" of the Doctor far more than her gender does.

There is a humility to this Chibnall version of the Doctor that seems more to do with his vision of her belief system than to do with her gender. It's not about her being a woman. It's about THIS regeneration of the Doctor expressing much that we have admittedly seen before in a framework of faith, of virtues, of the struggle of saints. Holy men who die alone, unwitnessed. Saints from a destroyed planet who come to witness the deaths of men and women who die alone, so that their deaths are not lost--they are seen and remembered. Men and women of good will who carry on in the face of loss.

I am a writer and a lit-crit nut. I find myself looking more and more at Grace, her relationship with Ryan and with Graham, and her death in the first episode. Grace is brave, hopeful, enthusiastic, curious, gleeful, valiant, morally straight. She is a real, understandable blessing in the lives of her two men-folk...and, we find someone whose son has wandered from her, lost to her. Her death gives growing context to Graham's own growing wisdom and insight. Her life gives context to Ryan's courage, and his odd, complicated but loving relationship with Graham.

Grace is "grace." She's almost all the elements one commonly associates with The Doctor him/herself. She's hope and love and decency, and her death may be real--but her effect lives on. She is the thread tying much of the show together....she's there in Rosa, and again implied in chunks of Demon of the Punjab, motivating Graham's comments. She's one of this new Doctor Who's saints.

Yes. I mean that. She's one of the saints.

So, too, is the Doctor--but she's a living saint, beset with doubt, and coming off of what can only be seen as a hell of a hard last regeneration. The fanon theory that a Time Lord changes gender in response to a near-suicidal depression seems to "work" a bit here: much as I adored Peter Capaldi's Doctor, he was a Doctor struggling to find hope, after centuries of loss. Whittaker's Doctor is a humble seeker, beginning to find hope again, as she walks a pilgrim road with her new companions, who are on their own pilgrim walks. These are not Rose, the bratty, grubby, rather despicable teenaged Lolita who revives Eccleston's Doctor through her pure, lawless greed for life and experience. They are not Donna, the Doctor's best buddy, as into space opera as he is. They are certainly not Martha Jones, who falls into love with the swashbuckling Demi-God in the Blue Box. And they sure as hell are not Amy and Rory and River and Clara--or even Bill, though Bill might fit in with them. They are not "Lost Boys." They are companions on the long walk. In many ways they are peers. In many ways they are even the ones teaching the Doctor.

The hero-quest has become, in our culture, a largely action-and-adventure paradigm. It's easy to forget that at heart it was a soul seeking maturity, coming into its own strength and moral integrity. This is a hero-quest in which all the pilgrims on the road are pilgrim knights...saints. Seekers. People cut adrift in certain ways, looking for the wisdom and the growth to master their own castaway status--and in the meantime joining together in love, joy, friendship and communion.

Now, does this make Chibnall's vision of this show good "Doctor Who"? I am not sure. I am sure that his vision will add depth to the Doctor's long canon, and complicate the ways the Doctor can grow in future. We now have a Doctor with a faith, who grieves with a liturgy and who officiates in priestly mode (not mere "legendary authority who can marry people mode") at a wedding. Who talks about what she sees as universal values, and core ideals, above and beyond, "Be kind."

I find myself wondering, in the nosy, idle way of lit-crit academics, what Chibnall's own religious background is. He is making me think at the very least of Joyce, who may have denied Catholicism, but who also never really stopped being a believer in conflict with his own belief. Chibnall's world seems not only profoundly spiritual, but that spirituality feels liturgical and priestly. I wonder if that will go anywhere.


End file.
